The present invention concerns a navigation system for a vehicle having locations of various selectable groups stored in memories and having a device for measuring the distance between the selected destination and the locations for a selected group, with the ability to retrieve the locations belonging to the selected group as a function of the measured distance from the destination and to reproduce it on a reproduction device.
Navigation systems are known and are being used increasingly, in particular, in passenger cars in order to make it easier or possible for the driver to locate a destination point at a destination. For this purpose, the navigation systems have road maps stored in electronic form whose individual points can be determined by coordinates. In addition, different groups of locations, which enable a certain destination point to be located as an alternative to coordinate data or street names and numbers, are stored in memories. The different groups of locations can be, for example, hotels, restaurants, parking garages, sports facilities, sites of events, government offices, etc. According to one known navigation system, after calling up one of these groups of locations, the distance between the stored locations and a destination entered by the user is measured, and the ten closest locations for this destination, for example, are output to a screen. One problem with known navigation systems of this type is that the output locations are frequently useless because the distance to the destination is much too great, while in other instances so many locations are stored for a relatively short distance to the destination that selecting the ten closest locations does not provide the driver with sufficient information for the present situation.
An object of the present invention is to enable locations in a navigation system to be output more reliably.
This object is achieved with a device for controlling the reproduction of locations whose distance is less than a specific distance limit.
According to the present invention, the locations of the selected group lying within a specific distance from the destination are output instead of a fixed number of locations. To do this, a radius around the destination can be defined in the navigation system, identifying the area in which the locations to be reproduced may lie. In this case, the device for measuring the distance is designed for measuring distance along a straight line. The coordinates of the destination and the selected location can be used for measuring the distance.
The distance limit can be preset in the device, but is preferably variable. It can be varied on an individual basis by making an entry. However, automatically applying different distance limits as a function of the currently selected group of locations, which can be useful in individual cases, for example, when comparing the xe2x80x9crestaurantsxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9chospitalsxe2x80x9d groups, is also conceivable. As a general rule, it may be useful to have a larger distance limit for hospitals than for restaurants.